Losing Your Job on the 30% Ruling in Wageningen: What Happens to the Tax Benefit

Why this comes up in Wageningen

Wageningen has the highest concentration of international researchers of any small town in the Netherlands, built around the university and the agri-food research institutes and companies clustered with it. A large share arrive on fixed-term research or project contracts with the 30% ruling applied, on funding cycles rather than open-ended employment. The result is an unusual pattern: highly paid, highly qualified people whose tax position and residence planning both depend on a contract that everybody knows has an end date.

The 2026 position, and the reversal people missed

The stepped reduction announced in 2023 - 30 percent, then 20, then 10 across the term - was reversed before it fully took effect. It is not the law and has not been since the 2025 tax plan.

For 2026 the rate is a flat 30 percent. It is scheduled to become 27 percent from 1 January 2027, with the government's own guidance noting that the commencement date is not yet definitive. Employees who were already using the ruling in 2023 keep 30 percent for the remainder of their term and are not affected by the 2027 reduction or the raised income norms.

The maximum duration is five years, reduced from eight on 1 January 2019.

The salary norm has to keep being met

The ruling is conditional on a taxable salary threshold, not just on having been granted once. For 2026 the general norm is €46,107, and €35,048 for employees under 30 holding a qualifying master's degree.

This matters at the end of a job for a reason that is easy to miss: a part-year of employment, or a period at reduced hours during a notice period or a partial return from illness, can pull the annualised figure around. If a negotiated exit involves reduced hours or a lower salary for a final period, the tax consequence belongs in the negotiation rather than being discovered afterwards.

Termination date is a financial variable

Because the ruling attaches to the employment, the date the employment formally ends does real work. In a negotiated exit that date is often treated as an administrative detail and settled casually - but it interacts with the tax year, with the notice period under article 7:672 BW, and with the calculation of the transition payment under article 7:673 BW, which accrues by length of service.

The practical advice is narrow and worth following: before agreeing an end date, have the tax consequence checked alongside the employment one. The employment lawyer will not necessarily model the tax position, and the tax adviser will not necessarily know what is negotiable.

What we deliberately do not state here

There is a widely repeated rule about being able to carry the ruling to a new employer if you find one within a certain number of months. It is probably right, and we are not publishing the specifics, because we could not confirm the current position against the Belastingdienst directly and this is the detail people most rely on.

Check it with the Belastingdienst or a Dutch tax adviser before making a decision that depends on it - particularly before turning down an offer, or accepting an end date, on the assumption that the ruling travels with you.

The employment questions run separately

Whatever happens to the tax ruling, the employment position stands on its own. If you are on a fixed-term contract, check the chain rule - three contracts or 24 months converts it to a permanent one, and researchers on successive annual contracts pass that line more often than they realise. If it is permanent, the employer needs a ground, a route and a notice period.

The transition payment is owed from the first day of employment where the employer ends the contract, capped for 2026 at €102,000 gross or one gross annual salary where that is higher.

What this page is based on

• The expatregeling (30% ruling) as administered by the Belastingdienst
• Article 7:673 BW - transition payment
• Article 7:672 BW - statutory notice periods

Checked against wetten.overheid.nl and rechtspraak.nl in August 2026. Dutch employment law changes, and several reforms described here have passed parliament without yet being in force - where that is the case the page says so.

Common questions

Other employment situations

• AmsterdamPushed to sign a settlement agreementYou have a statutory right to walk back a signed settlement agreement. Most people never find out in time.
• The HagueFixed-term contract not renewedAfter three contracts or 24 months, the next one is permanent by operation of law - whatever the paperwork says.
• RotterdamLong-term sick leave and reintegrationYour employer carries dated obligations during long-term illness. Missing them has consequences for the employer, not for you.